Hoax Museum Blog: Pranks

Men’s Studies — Freshmen at Swarthmore College found in their mailboxes a course packet describing the "Men's Studies" department. Courses included:
Of course, there is no Men's Studies department at Swarthmore. It was a prank dreamed up by some upperclassmen. I'm not sure how many colleges still have Women's Studies departments. I think most places are now calling it Gender Studies.

No one at Swarthmore seemed at all offended by the prank, though reportedly the Russian Department complained that the 'Vodka' seminar was not cross-listed.

Rick Rolling — Sometimes I read things that make me feel really out of it. This article by Rene Guzman in the San Antonio Express-News was one of those things, because it describes a prank that apparently is wildly popular on the internet, and yet I'd never heard of it before. It's called Rick Rolling:

The link above really does go to Rene Guzman's article, whereas this link goes to Rick Astley's video.

Wrapping Rove’s Car — White House pranksters wrapped Karl Rove's car in plastic wrap, as a way to say goodbye to the guy. CBS News reports:

It would have been funnier if they shrink-wrapped Rove himself and shipped him away somewhere. And if they had done it seven years ago.

Topless Car Wash — Young women in Shirley, New York held up signs along the parkway advertising a topless car wash. Eager male drivers willingly paid their $5, and drove up to get their car wash. Unfortunately, it turned out to be not quite what they expected. Hidden behind a blue tarp were shirtless male firefighters, who proceeded to wash their car. "A little bit of a bait-and-switch," Assistant Chief Donald Prince admitted. "All the guys back there are all topless." (Link: allaroundphilly.com)

Office Prankster — C.P. Smith, an editor at the Orange County Register, has accepted a buyout and will soon be leaving his job. And during his final days at work he's decided to become a prankster. After all, what can management do? Fire him?

When interviews are being filmed in the paper's offices, he becomes "loud, disruptive, and performs antics for the camera." Here's one of his antics, as described by the KOCE-TV news director: I'm guessing there's more to this story than we're being told.

Football Fake Out — I'm no expert on football, but I don't think this is a legal move. (via Funl)

Dentist Implants Fake Boar Tusks — While operating on one of his employees, Dentist Robert Woo temporarily implanted fake boar tusks in her mouth and took photos of her. The boar tusks, he claimed, were merely a practical joke -- an allusion to the pot-bellied pigs her family raises. He hoped the joke would help foster a "friendly working environment."

Unfortunately, the employee wasn't amused when she later saw the photos. She sued him for outrage, battery, and invasion of privacy. Woo asked his insurance company to represent him, but they refused, saying that the joke was intentional and not a normal business activity. Therefore, Woo had to hire a lawyer on his own and eventually reached a settlement with his employee in which he paid her $250,000. Here's what happened next: I'm not normally sympathetic to insurance companies, but it sounds like they have a point. His strange practical joke doesn't seem work related.

iPhone Mania — I'd be shocked if you didn't know what the iPhone is or that it's going to be in stores this Friday, the 29th, at 6 PM local time. Apple's publicity machine has been working overtime to promote what some are calling the "Jesus Phone."

The iPhone may be over-hyped, but I wouldn't call it a hoax. The guy who is first in line for one at Apple's flagship NYC store, however, might be classified as a hoaxer.

Greg Packer is what you might call a media whore. He's been quoted in the press as a "man on the street" over a hundred times since 1995, according to his Wikipedia entry (by the way, why does HE get his own Wikipedia entry when *I* don't have one? Grrr.) He's so ubiquitous, in fact, that an AP memo asks reporters to try to find other people to comment on things.

According to Wikipedia, he shows up at an average of two media events per week. At the moment I'm typing this, he's sitting outside the Apple store and it's guaranteed that he'll be all over TV on the 29th when Apple finally lets the unwashed touch this (according to some) paradigm-changing gadget.

I doubt that Apple is paying him to camp out, but who knows? Anyway...

UPDATE: Gelt magazine contacted me with a link to a short piece about the origin of the nickname "Jesus Phone":

Link

Krkonose Mountains Nuked — Sunday morning viewers of a Czech public television channel saw an unexpected sight during the broadcast of the weather. The screen was showing a panning scenic shot of the Krkonose Mountains in Bohemia, as the announcer delivered the weather report. Suddenly a large mushroom cloud appeared in the distance.

Luckily the Krkonose Mountains hadn't been nuked. The scene was the work of a Czech art group calling itself ZTOHOVEN. They had managed to hack into one of the station's camera feeds, and replace the incoming video with their own content.

Czech TV isn't very happy about the prank. They're filing criminal charges against the group.

Some other pranks that ZTOHOVEN is known for: And: You can see their latest handiwork on YouTube:

Do you really need to go? — When workers in Eston Town Hall went to the bathroom, they were surprised to find a sign with the following message posted in the lavatories: Staff members complained that they thought this was taking environmentalism to an extreme. But some investigation revealed that the signs were a prank. The identity of the prankster is unknown.

So the signs were a joke, but I have read serious proposals asking people not whether they really need to go, but whether they really need to flush so often. It's the old "If it's yellow, mellow; if it's brown, flush it down" advice. And there's quite a bit of research into creating urine-separating toilets, that would prevent the need to flush urine into the sewage system.

Unfortunate student pranks — It's student-prank time, and every year we see some good pranks, as well as a few that don't turn out so well. Here are three of the latter kind.

Urinating in the ketchup
"A sophomoric prank put a 15-year-old Valhalla boy in a legal pickle after he was arrested for allegedly urinating into a ketchup dispenser in the Valhalla Middle/High School cafeteria... It was not known whether any of the 200 students in the cafeteria during the second lunch period ingested the tainted ketchup. All condiment dispensers were replaced with sealed individual packets the next day."

Dead cats hung from trees
"San Luis Obispo High School is home of the tigers, but on Tuesday morning it looked more like a cat cemetery. Over the Memorial Day weekend, the science shed was broken into and the bodies of 17 cats used in anatomy class for dissection had been randomly hung on various trees around the high school campus."

Massive foodfight
"Three high school students were arrested after a food fight by 200 students left a police officer with a broken foot, officials said. West Aurora High School students threw french fries, milk, sandwiches and pizza slices at each other Thursday during what administrators called a senior prank that went wild. 'It was just insane," said senior Zach Little. "Things like milk cartons, full pop bottles and blue slushies were flying around. Kids literally bought the food to throw it .'" A police officer who tried to stop it ended up with a broken foot, and another school official suffered minor injuries. (It's unfortunate that people got injured, but it actually sounds like it was kind of fun.)

Two Senior Pranks — In recent weeks, seniors at high schools throughout America have once again been busy dreaming up pranks. Here are two that have made their way to YouTube.

The Portland Peace Sign: Students at Wilson High School in Portland, Oregon planted $600 worth of marigolds in the shape of a peace sign on the front lawn of the school. That actually seems like quite a nice gesture. A prank that creates something positive instead of being merely destructive or obnoxious. But in a display of a complete lack of humor, school officials are holding one senior solely responsible for the prank and insisting that she pay up to $1,000 for the removal of the flowers. Her mistake was admitting to a local TV news crew that she participated in the prank. The school has turned down offers by parents who were willing to remove the flowers free of charge. The Oregonian has a brief article about it, and a video on YouTube shows a brief view of the peace sign.

The Foothills Streaker: In a more traditional prank, Cameron Blazevich, a student at Catalina Foothills High School, streaked across the field during graduation wearing only a jock strap and sneakers. YouTube has the footage.

Quick Links: Belly Dancer Has Half Her Bottom Removed, etc. — Belly Dancer Has Half Her Bottom Removed
German belly dancer Julia 'Cleopatra' Meyer went to a private clinic to get liposuction on her thighs. Unfortunately, the surgeon removed fat from her right buttock instead. She was awarded the equivalent of £12,000 - twice what she had asked for in compensation.
(Thanks, Sophie.)

Imposter at Stanford
For eight months, Azia Kim lived on campus, studied with friends, and ate in the cafeteria. Trouble is, she wasn't actually a student there.

Swedish TV Apologises to Prime Minister Over Water Prank
STV have announced that they "deeply apologise" after one of their reporters sprayed the Swedish Prime Minister with water from a fake microphone at the premiere of the Pirates of the Caribbean film.

Quick Links: Pranks and Robbers — Prank Bathroom Signs Backfire
If you ever go to McGuire's Irish Pub in Destin, Florida, it pays to read the fine print, especially when going to the bathroom. For years McGuire's has played a joke on its customers. The fine print on the "Ladies" sign explains that it's actually the men's room, and vice versa for the "Mens" sign. But recently, "A father filed a complaint, after his daughter was interrupted by a man in what she thought was the ladies room. Now, state regulators are threatening to close the pub because of the lack of proper signs." McGuire's general manager says that it was merely intended to be an "Irish joke."

Fake Hostage Situation at Bank
If you ever decide to blindfold and kidnap one of your co-workers as a joke, don't stop at the local bank to make a deposit. People might get the wrong idea: "Squad cars swarmed into Westfield Valencia Town Center around noon and a California Highway Patrol plane scoped out the streets for the suspected robber, who was gone from the bank by the time they arrived. There was a catch: It wasn't a robbery. The man had "kidnapped" his co-worker and was taking her to a birthday lunch, and had stopped at the SCV Bank branch on Town Center Drive to make a quick deposit. "I would say he could have made a better decision than to go into a bank," said Deputy Greg Hutt."

Robbers Disguised as Jehovah's Witnesses
A Swedish newspaper, The Local, reports that "Police in the Dalarna region are on the lookout for two well-dressed young men following an unusual burglary in Orsa on Sunday evening. The men, aged between 20 and 30, managed to gain entry to an elderly woman's apartment after dressing up as Jehovah's Witnesses. 'Once inside the apartment, they pulled out a knife and forced her to hand over jewellery and money,' said police spokesman Tore Strand." Hmm. So how do they know the robbers were merely "dressing up" as Jehovah's Witnesses. Maybe they were a pair of Jehovah's Witnesses gone bad.

Flipping: Is it a new prank or an old one? — The Wilmington, Delaware News Journal reports that there's a new prank that's all the rage in America's high schools. It's called backpack-flipping. The idea is simple. You take someone's backpack, remove all its contents, turn it inside out, and then restuff it with everything that was originally in there. Students are divided on whether or not this is amusing: I think it sounds as annoyingly stupid as wet-willies or giving people wedgies. But is it a new prank? That's the question. Some believe it is: I don't recall ever seeing this occur when I was in high school either. So maybe it is new.

Google April Fool’s Day Jokes 2007 — Google Introduces TiSP
Gmail Paper
For those who like the features of Gmail, but aren’t so keen on email.

Google Maps Trick
This trick produced by Google Maps staff allows you to position one of a number of customisations on a map.

(Thanks to all who sent us these links.)

Public Break-up — A University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill couple, Ryan Burke and Mindy Moorman, have admitted that their Valentine’s Day break-up was nothing more than a prank.

The story went that the couple had been dating for four months when Burke discovered Moorman had been cheating on him.
He invited people via facebook.com to watch the confrontation, which featured a group of singers performing the Dixie Chicks song “I’m Not Ready to Make Nice” before he broke up with Moorman, to which she responded with expletives. Hundreds of people turned up to the event, and it was quickly posted on youtube.com, where the video has been seen by thousands of people worldwide.

However, twelve days after the break-up, Burke admitted that the entire story was a prank. He and Moorman had never even dated, and they had set up the spectacle to show ”the power of Internet communities and the amount of money that companies make from them.”

Man Apologises to Internet — 10zenmonkeys.com has posted an article discussing the interesting law case surrounding Michael Crook. Inspired by the craigslist sex hoax by Jason Fortuny, Michael Crook started up a website to expose ‘perverts’ on the Craigslist site. He’d copied Fortuny’s prank, then posted his results on his webpage.
When 10 Zen Monkeys posted a screen shot of Crook taken from a Fox news report on his previous ‘Forsake our Troops’ hoax, Crook responded with an email falsely claiming that he owned the copyright for his own image.
Whilst many sites did remove the image and quotes in question, other web users took advantage of the fact that: ”...deep within the DMCA law is a counter-provision — 512(f), which states that misrepresenting yourself as a copyright owner has consequences.”

Mr Crook has now been effectively sued and is prevented from issuing any notices of copyright infringement, as well as being required to apologise to the Internet community as a whole. You can see his apology at the bottom of the article here.

(Thanks, Destiny Land.)

Quick Links: Fishermen Eat ‘Alien’, etc. —
Fishermen Eat 'Alien'
Fishermen from the Rostov region of Russia recently caught a mysterious creature that is said to have made 'squeaking sounds'. The men were out fishing two weeks ago after a storm, and found something unidentifiable. The animal weighed around 100kg, and the men took video footage of it using a camera phone. Then they ate it.
Whilst experts were disappointed that there was nothing left of the creature, the footage has been reviewed by scientists and ufologists, and both appear to agree that there was nothing extra-terrestrial about the specimen.
(Thanks, Jen.)

Duckling Born with Four Legs
A genetic mutation meant Stumpy the duckling was born with four full sized legs. Apparently he's doing well.
(Thanks, Nettie.)

Nope, It's Soap
This website sells... well, soap that's hand-made, coffee-scented, and made to look like dog poo.
Apparently it's a great gift. If a tad surprising for the recipient.
(Thanks, Randall.)

Quick Links: Holy Spatula, etc. —
Holy Spatula
A spatula used to flip a pancake that supposedly had the image of Jesus on it is now up for sale on ebay. The pancake itself was eaten. The seller says: ”Look closely at the middle photo, and you can see that it bears some mysterious symbols, possibly some kind of sacred message. I'm no religious scholar, but I'm sure this had some kind of spiritual significance.”

Art as Prank
A ‘Your Ad Here’ illuminated sign on the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angeles proved to be the work of L.A. graphic artist James Cui.

Man Fakes Robbery to Get Back to Prison
Danny Robert Villegas enjoyed prison so much that he staged a robbery in order to get sent back.